Forward: This is my first post and thank you for the invite to the community I have recently purchased a DAC V from SW1X and these are my initial thoughts.
Cheers,
-Michael The Orange
Precis
This is just an initial impression written by myself without any outside influence except perhaps a penchant for peaty Whiskey. It does not include any reservations. I feel anything needs time to feel the real inn’s and outs outside this is simply what I’ve heard and what I have experienced during the first really week of listening.
Preamble
I’m having such a hard time writing this short jot about the first three-five days of living with the newest DAC. I don’t know how to explain to someone in words that my DAC journey stopped after hearing this new DAC V from SW1X as I already had a sound that would fill every pigeonhole at the most extreme levels with the Vivaldi Apex. The Vivaldi felt dynamic and weighty… I knew it wasn’t cohesive but was in ignorance to the actual level of failure from dCS that I was imbibing before my experience with the home demo of the DAC III SE (single ended), it had been touted as a success story (looking at you Vivaldi Apex stack) it was not. It’s staggering to me how I was blissfully unaware that notes could be blended together into a cohesive chamber during complex or dynamic passages since multiple other dacs had yet to manage. What I knew was one of the best stacks on the market wasn’t for me and I’d been demoing it for more than a month at home when the little DAC III came along. The V manages to instill instead something that couldn’t be any less digital, couldn’t be closer to the stage, couldn’t add any more light. You will sweat.
First initial impressions.
Needs to come with more packaging
Thank you for not insulting me by including a power cable
It has a hot out, be prepared.
For fit, finish, and feel It is clear I’ve traded milled aluminum for raw guts and a bag of transformers. It’s a beautiful copper square top, but she’s heavy in all the wrong places and lopsided to carry. Looking on the inside of the V, it is wound and tidy and looks like someone gave a damn. Joints look secure, everything is labeled or has a way to correspond to the component. Tubes go in easily and the instructions make it easy even for a first time user like me to feel confident in my first installation. Everything is moved into place and I’ve hooked my streamer to the SW1X and am ready for sheer rapture.
Alas It was installed and roaring to go and it was 23:00 and I was willing to give it a listen to just feel it in. Enter pop/hiss/warble/no treble/ no bass I turned it off and the sound of a demon orgy reflected upon a few more walls and decided to wait for another sunrise. Now the SW1X comes with a good set of rules that we can probably all get behind, like don’t touch the glowing tubes and don’t expect much for the first few days and don’t ever turn me off baby. Tube burn in isn’t burn in as I suppose you might normally think of it, as optional. Insofar as it doesn’t really care that you want to listen to music it just wants to charge its Black Gate caps.
The first sixty hours is sorta a gauntlet of being concerned and worried while equally being unable to walk away from the V because every time I returned something new would have changed, the plus side is that the dynamics naturally rock you to sleep anyways. The first changes were more stabilization, then sound slowly started to clean itself up and the stage didn’t widen so much as start building itself. This was more like watching a cathedral being built than a child reared but both are sort of applicable here because this felt like I was rapidly going through the experience of watching the SW1X grow and expand.
I’ve never seen such a burn-in before, while my experiences with tubes are much fewer than SS, I have some, but this is probably the most radical set of subtle and not subtle changes that I’ve seen. From the moment you turn it on you are pressed into sitting down at the venue, unfortunately for you, you will spend the next 60 hours moving around this venue hearing new and different things. Songs will have subtle bells and symbols coming out of the woodwork. It’s a famine and feast at the same time.
So my first impressions that aren’t googly eyed because it’s a new toy.
Dynamics are painfully real, scare you out of your fucking chair real. The speed at which things are coming is incredible, especially for live events where recordings aren’t necessarily the most important thing going on. One of the most striking things I’ve found is that clapping sounds natural; this is a rarity in my search so far, you’ll also find yourself clapping, so try and demo the SW1X privately. The sound raging from the SW1X also never feels like I’m in a recording studio. Everything has a presence to it, a sort of ‘live’ tangible weight where the instruments are treated with the same gravity as the vocals and bass.
The sound stage is sweaty and enormous; truly, going to a live Red Rocks recording concert is as difficult as descending the stairs. The hardest part of the soundstage is that it’s as deep as it is wide, so when you look for an instrument the focus required is very little to find whatever you’re looking for and be caught in the current of the instrument’s sound. I don’t know quite how to talk about the
It shouldn’t go without saying you better spike things and install earthquake hooks for your pictures. If everything is given equal representation as I posit the bass is going to be a big player here if only because it’s if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s not playing second fiddle. It’s as we spoke before the lower registers are given free reign to bring to the forefront exactly what’s happening on Organs, Cello’s, Synth filters, etc…; the fact that it can do EDM and Synth not only well but with an authority that commands attention beggard my imagination. The SW1X isn’t really interested in excuses; it expects you to get up and dance.
(Side Bar) I think someone should talk about honesty to the notes as an entity unto themselves not so much as anyone intended them to be played but to how it actually sounds when played. It’s not enough to hear what has been largely ‘until I bought this DAC’ a facsimile of my musical library, a handy approximation, a masturbatory exercise in missing the details.
(Random off)I was kind of striking out on rock working this morning i think because of the new spacing and the everything finally being on the rack again for the first time in awhile anyways I came back to it a few hours ago and threw easy stuff till hanging D then i went after it with Green Day and Offspring and found out ‘the kids aren’t alright’ has an ascending and descending riff in between lyrics it always sounded the same to me before… its a new fucking song. then I flew into sublime because dont count out Santeria where you can hear the snare fucking behind you and a slide to blink sincee asking what your age is again now has ? Is always relevant teenage rage induced me over to anti flag and pennywise into you get the idea.
Very much enjoyed the rest of your words and descriptions too, particularly enjoying read